September 16, 2026 • 41 mins
For this month's book club, we return to the work of Carmen Maria Machado with her debut work Her Body and Other Parties, a collection of genre-bending short stories in the vein of urban legends and folktales with some very creative twists. Anney and Samantha delve into some themes around women and women's bodies.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
And Samantha.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
And welcome to Stuff I Never Told You, a production
of iHeartRadio. And today we have a first here on
Book Club. I think, Samantha, correct me if I'm wrong,
but I believe this is the first time we're featuring
a book by an author we've already covered before. Yeah.
(00:33):
I think so.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
You are correct. Because we try to spread it out.
So this is the first time we were like, oh,
we want to come back.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Yes, because we both loved the graphic novel, The Lola Woods.
That's one of my favorite things we've read for this segment.
And we kept coming across the author's other works. And
it was just so tempting and eventually... I said, I
really want to read this. So today we are focusing
(01:02):
on Carmen Maria Machado's debut novel, Her Body and Other Parties,
which is a collection of eight horror short stories that
cover a wide range of fears and anxieties facing women.
So the eight stories are The Husband Stitch, Inventory, Mothers,
Especially Heinous, Real Women Have Bodies, Eight Bites, The Resident,
(01:25):
and Difficult at Parties. After it was published in 2017,
it was nominated for numerous awards and won the Shirley
Jackson Award. It's genre-bending and strange and visceral and haunting
and very queer, I have to say. It captures a
lot of girlhood and young womanhood with threads of urban legends,
(01:48):
ghost stories, Girl Scout camp stories, the type of stories
that stick with you and that are often shared or
passed on. A lot of them are ambiguous or feature
an unreliable narrator. It's a political conversation and at times
condemnation of how we as a society treat women and
(02:10):
women's bodies. I have to say I had the most
embarrassing revelation after I finished it and I was just
thinking about it because it was a book I really
like sat with afterwards. I was like, oh, let me
let me go through my thoughts here. And I was like, wow,
that's a lot of stuff about women's bodies. And I
was like, yeah, the title. Yes. Yes. Yes. So before
(02:35):
we get into this, spoilers and content warning, this book
is pretty graphic when it comes to sex, eroticism, and
body harm. Not necessarily in a bad way. There's like
good and bad of that, but but it exists. Some
of the themes are pretty heavy. We're going to be
(02:55):
touching on these topics that we aren't going to go
to in depth. One of the things I love about
this book is that it has a lot of really
creative styles of writing. And Samantha and I were talking
about this beforehand. Just every story felt very unique and
very different in a way that I very much enjoyed.
(03:17):
So the first one, for instance, has this thing where
it says, if you're reading this story aloud, and then
it will have like instructions. So if you are reading
this story out loud, force a listener to reveal a
devastating secret, then open the nearest window to the street
and scream it as loudly as you are able. And
(03:38):
just to kind of capture those emotions, those really powerful
emotions that she's trying to convey. And interestingly, Samantha was
further ahead in reading the book than I was, or listening,
as the case may be. You were telling me about
(04:00):
this one based on Law & Order SVU.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Right.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
And I was very confused. I was like, wait, so
if I haven't seen Law & Order SVU, what's going
to happen to me? And you're like, no, no, no,
you're going to be fine. And I was. So Especially Heinous,
which is the longest short story in there, is essentially
an even more messed up episode of Law & Order SVU.
(04:29):
So it's like actually Benson and Stabler are the characters,
and it's broken down by short episode descriptions. Machado used
the real episode titles to make this whole thing. There
are also doppelgangers, Henson and Abler, who seem better and happier.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Which, by the way, it took me a minute to
realize Henson and Abler. I was like, oh. Oh, okay. Like,
I literally was like, why are they going back and
forth from these characters? I'm confused. Okay, I get it.
I get it now.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Yes. Yes. And there's a lot going on in this
short story. There's alien objections. There's ghosts. Here's an example. Quote, redemption.
Benson accidentally catches a rapist when she Google stalks her
newest OKCupid date. She can't decide whether or not to
(05:26):
mark this in success, call it rapist, or failure, date
didn't work out column. She marks it in both. So
it's just little entries like that for every episode title. Yeah.
There's another one that stood out to me is inventory.
wherein it's told through somebody's almost journal entries about their
(05:51):
sex partners. And in the background, you realize the apocalypse
is happening and it's getting worse and worse. But it's
not the focus. The sex partners are the focus.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Right, right.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Yeah. So because these are short stories, we're not going
to do our usual plot summary, but we are going
to be discussing plot details and the themes. Okay. I personally,
if this is your thing, if you like short stories,
body horror, I really recommend this book. But yes, let
(06:24):
us get started. One of the first themes I would
say is life and death, which makes sense because it
is a collection of horror short stories. There's just a
lot of, because it's body horror stories, There's a lot
of writing about the ways your body can fail you,
(06:51):
like a lot of illness or injury, a lot of
stuff like that. And then just like imminent death is
in several of them. Or even ghosts outside of the
SVU one. There's another ghost story in there. Here's a
(07:13):
quote I wanted to include. Scoffing is the first mistake
a woman can make. Life is too short to be
afraid of nothing, she said, and I will show you.
Pride is the second mistake. Afterward, everyone believed that she
had wished to die, even though she had died proving
that she wanted to live. As it turns out, being
right was the third and worst mistake. So I really
(07:37):
like that. Because the... I love this idea that she
was trying to prove she didn't want to die and
in doing so died. And there's just so many great
quotes in this book that it was hard to isolate,
but that one stood out to me. Another big theme, obviously,
(08:02):
is bodies. And women's bodies in particular. And sex. There
is a lot of sex and sensuality and desire in
this book. As I said, the joys and horrors of it,
it's not always good, it's not always bad. Another thing
is not respecting women's boundaries. Here's a quote from The
(08:23):
Husband Stitch. A wife, he says, should have no secrets
from her husband. I don't have any secrets, I tell him.
The ribbon. The ribbon is not a secret. It's just mine.
So in this story... It's a take on a popular
urban legend about the woman with the ribbon around her neck.
(08:44):
She takes it off and then her head comes off.
Which I feel like we've read another version of this
story in another series of short stories. Right.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
I know it exists in the stories you tell in
the dark or the stories you tell in the dark.
So this is a legend that she really just put
into it. Because I was like, wait, wait, wait. This
is familiar. Yes. And I did not think this is
where it was going to go. Because I was like,
that is obviously an urban legend story. And she took
(09:16):
it into this realm. But she really opened it up
because I was like, man, there's this level of like
this dude who had everything and happiness and love. And
it was wonderful. But he had to do this thing
because it was one thing he could not have. Which
talks about men in general, about like the challenge and
this conversation in it as well. Willing to change. not
(09:38):
hear her trust her when she says don't do this
this is the only like i've never requested anything from
you but this one thing and he still needed to
own that of her and it was like.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Wow yeah yeah and he passed that on to his
son which we will talk about later, but in her
version of this story, which I'm pretty sure it was
called Revenge. It was a Japanese set of horror stories
we did. I think it had a similar... Oh, that one?
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
It had something similar in this vein. In this Women
are born with a ribbon somewhere around their body. And
it's just part of them. But he didn't view it
as that. He viewed it as something that he should
own or be able to have. And he would like,
even though she had made explicit her boundaries about it,
(10:39):
he would kind of like pull at it and ask
her about it. All of this stuff. So this goes into...
Another thing that I saw throughout this book, men's desire
being prioritized. So after giving birth in the husband's stitch,
the woman in question undergoes a painful procedure to tighten
(11:01):
her vagina so that intercourse with her husband will be
more pleasurable for him. And that's what the title refers to.
The husband's stitch is an actual thing. And she just
went along with it because she thought she had to.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Well, in the story, it seemed interesting because she was like, wait, what?
That was not a thing I'm thinking about. I'm thinking
about everything else. I'm thinking about the fact that it
was so painful that this is going to be a problem,
that knowing that I'm probably not going to be able
to have another child because of all the problems. But
that's what you're worried about. And when she was about
to ask a question that had nothing to do with that,
(11:36):
the doctor's first response was like, oh, no, no, we
took care of it. You're going to be as tight as...
She's like, what the... Okay. And never asked the question
that she really had pertaining to her own body.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Exactly. Exactly. Because they're like viewing it as property of men.
They're not viewing it as her own. Right.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
And he never asked her. He just looked at her
husband and was like, yeah, I got you, man.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
I know what you want to eat.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
So gross. So gross. There are also themes of sexual
assault throughout. So the SVU story, for instance, is a
(12:20):
way to ask, like, why do we watch a show
about women and girls being raped and murdered? And the
answer is the scary truth, and that's because women and
girls are raped and murdered. And then there's another story
at the end, Bad at Parties, that is about a
(12:41):
sexual trauma woman who has experienced sexual trauma and is
trying to get over it and be intimate, sexually intimate
with her partner again. And to do that, she's, she
rents these porn tapes and then she goes online. But
she can hear the voice, the like inner voices of
(13:04):
the porn actors. And it just completely takes her out
of it. Obviously, because they're thinking about things like, I
got to go do X, Y, Z. My husband won't
like that. Like, you know, all these things. And that
one was upsetting because the partner wasn't like necessarily pushing her,
(13:24):
but she was really pushing herself. Right. To get over it.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
It sounded like the worth of their relationship was based
on whether or not she can have sex like they
used to.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
And then her thinking that her being strong is to
get past it, stay in the same apartment. where everything happened.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
But then, like, being obsessed into these videos because she
can see and hear things beyond. And it's interesting in
the way she relays it because she realizes it kind
of takes the way of these sexual things that's supposed
to entertain mostly men, that she sees the humanity behind
it because she's seen, like, how it can be used
(14:10):
against women oftentimes. And so that connection is like, separated
into being an act of like not a submission but
entertainment and that it's not nothing is real like that
sex has become like being an expression not an actual
expression of love it's just not real type of thing.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Yeah well and that's what she was experiencing at a
very awkward dinner party which she was having these interactions
that she just felt were so false and so fake
and nobody was being honest with each other. And, um,
because of what she'd just recently been through, she couldn't,
(14:57):
she couldn't deal with that. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Yeah. Well, I think also it sounded like she didn't
like parties to begin with.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
I think she felt she was awkward to begin with,
but then escalated by all of this. But at the
same time, also being confronted with a video camera.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Like that connection was an interesting moment for her to
be like, no, this is happening to me too. And
then also needing to use that videotape herself to videotape
herself because she was doing so many things during the
night that her boyfriend was like, yeah, you were trying
to kill me a couple of times because you're being restless.
She's not realizing this. So she needed that proof herself.
(15:37):
But also it felt like when she was videotaping them
that she could hear each other's thoughts too.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Yeah. Well, and I thought that was really interesting because
it felt like she was trying to reestablish a connection
to her body after her trauma. And she had this
camera like recording herself and watching it later and trying
to make sense of how she was acting versus how
(16:11):
she was feeling um yeah it was very interesting very
interesting one another theme as we often talk about in
our horror episodes motherhood so we already mentioned in husband
stitch there was um a thread of her she gives
(16:34):
birth to a son And she wants to raise him
to be a better man. And her son, at first,
that looked like that was going to be the case.
And we're going to talk a bit more about why
at the end. But then her husband pointed out, he
(16:58):
othered her for the ribbon, basically. He was like, this
ribbon is strange. Whereas previously their son had accepted, oh,
this is just a part of her. Now he viewed
it as, oh, this is a strange thing. And he
started pulling at it too. But she also has this
(17:18):
thought of like, she'd rather raise a son than a
daughter because she was afraid of raising a daughter in
the society that they were in. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
She said it's a void, so no ribbon.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Indicating that what she was going through, that daughter would
have gone through as well. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
Yes. There's also another story where one of the characters says,
essentially he's like, thank God we can't make a baby
because it's a queer couple. And then they do have
a baby. Yes.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
I was like, what? What's happening? What is happening? Yes.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
As I said, there are a lot of queer themes.
That story in particular has a lot of unreliable narrator
and you're not quite sure what's going on. And then
in the story, The Resident, which I believe is the
(18:24):
only one she wrote specifically for this book. Like every
other one had been written and published in other publications,
but The Resident, was new to this book. There is
a prank with the main character when she was a
kid in the brownies. And I found that whole thing interesting.
I was like, is this true about the brownies? But
(18:47):
where she basically was pranked because of her queerness. She
kissed a girl and she was really excited about it.
But then they kind of took her into the woods
and she had a pretty terrible experience. Um, I got
really sick. So there's things like that. There's other, um,
(19:12):
there's plenty of queer storylines throughout. I would say body image,
big one in this. Um, one of them was weight
and surgery with the story eight bites. It was strange
to read that now. Because we got all the like
GLP-1s and stuff like that. Because it was sort of,
(19:35):
it was framed as a very experimental surgery that everybody
was getting. So you got to hop on board or else.
It reminds me of the short story we did a
long time. ago on this book i read this like
short story i read in high school called like what
(19:57):
you lose but it was in the smoothies they were
these like smoothies that were the best thing you ever
had and then people would gain weight because they loved
the smoothies but all these like weight loss machines popped
up next to them And then guess what happens when
you use them 10 times? Aliens come for you. But
(20:20):
this was interesting in terms of there was sort of
a element of being haunted by the pieces of you,
the parts of you that you got rid of. And
then there was a lot of pressure and judgment about
weight loss procedures, whether it was to get one or
to not get one. So the mother and daughter in
(20:42):
this story, the mother gets it. The daughter is very
unhappy with this decision and asks her mom if her
mom thinks something is wrong with her body based on
the way she speaks about her own because they kind
of looked alike. And so I think that that touches
(21:03):
on a tension that a lot of us have had
where maybe you know you have these unhealthy thoughts body
image or body ideals, but you still want them, but
you don't want, like, other people to feel the same way,
but the other people are seeing what you're doing. Right, right.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
It was also interesting because, A, it sounded like she
had to trade her life. Essentially, there was a marker. Like,
if you do this, you're going to die at this point.
And it was, it shortened their lifespan. And she was
willing to sacrifice that to be skinny once again. Also
interesting because, When she's having a conversation with her daughter,
(21:43):
I can't tell if she's actually having a conversation with
her daughter or if it's in her mind. Yeah. Like,
that is one of the ghosts. Because when she talks
to her sisters who had all gone through it, it
sounded like a rite of passage for the entire family.
And it sounded like each one of them had been
confronted by happy ghosts.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
They're like, this is my future self. Thank you for
doing this or whatever, whatnot. She was the only one
amongst them. that had the haunting ghost, which she tried
to kill. I think she does kill. She doesn't know
what it is, but she killed it. But something else
comes back instead, or a different part comes back instead.
So it's interesting. I was like, I don't know if
this is real.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Yeah. No.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Or she's fighting the demons here.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
No, I think you're absolutely right. And that goes back
to the whole unreliable narrator, ambiguous ending. Is this real?
A lot of the stories make you at the end
be like, how did that really happen?
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Well, especially with the one with the queer couple having
the baby and the baby just dropped off. Because then
she sees the families with her child and it turns
out to be like, maybe she just dreamed up this
by seeing a picture of this child and broke into
someone's home.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Yes, that one is definitely... I think maybe number one.
It's in the top three of the most unreliable narrators.
I don't really know what....
Speaker 2 (23:12):
I will say, in the caveat of all this, the
entirety of the book, I was like, Annie, I think
you're going to have to translate some of these for
me because it may have went over my head. I'm
not sure exactly what was happening on this level. So
you might have to tell me what is going down
at this point. Because also in the SVU.
(23:34):
They had interns that were demons. And I was like,
I don't know why the disappearing interns is a part
of this story.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
I have to say, when I think of her writing
that one, I bet she was just having a delightful time.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Yes. I absolutely was like, I believe this may be
a fanfic of SVU in such a way that is
one of the most creative fanfics I've ever heard in
my life.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
It's so creative.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
It's so unique.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
It's so unique. And she originally was going to... I
think she was going to incorporate the original descriptions of
the episodes. But it was too long. So that's why
she went with the titles. And she said, basically, she
just looked at the title and tried to make a surreal...
version of what that title made her think of accomplished
(24:35):
accomplished and it does build and it's it's so strange
oh also it has a like really fun detail where
uh stadler can hear the like yes he thinks it's
like a like headache thing or he's hallucinating.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
The dun dun that comes in my like and it's
definitely the things that you've taught me about fanfic that
moment of like shipping And I know exactly what DA
she's talking about. I know exactly what, you know, like,
I'm like, oh, she wanted them to get, she needed
them to kiss. I get it. I get it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
It's a grand old time.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
It was. But back to, sorry, I will say about
the fading story. One of the, like, one of the
parts of all the things, like, why would you think this?
I'm like, now I need to go get oysters. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Because that's one of the things that she kind of
enjoys before she goes into that. And I'm like, yeah,
I need that.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Yes. So I think the fading story is really interesting.
So in this story, women are essentially fading away. Not
all women.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Oh, that was, that was a unique, that was horrifying.
That was, if that, I think there's so many that's like,
oh no, like, oh no, impending doom. But this was like,
Legitimately like, oh.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
This is a horror, this is ghost or horror story. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
And there's nothing you can do once you start fading
that they know of. And it was really sad, honestly.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
No, it was super sad.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
Yeah. Yeah. And it made me think of just so
many stories, but also just kind of the reality a
lot of times, unfortunately, is, you know, women having to
make themselves small or disappear or whatever it is to
(26:42):
make other people comfortable. Because, yeah, once you start fading,
you're just going to disappear. And that's the end of you.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
And the sadness is that no one is talking about it?
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
And then also the dialogue between the two dudes just still,
still seeing them as only sexual beings and whether or
not they can have sex with them.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Yep. That was pretty disgusting. Yeah. That was pretty gross.
And meanwhile, we have this portrait of a queer couple
and one of them is disappearing and just.
Kind of the heartbreak of that and not being able
to stop it. While these dudes are talking about, I
(27:38):
wonder if I can still have sex with these fading ladies.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
I don't know. Being picky about it.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
That was like, I know that's such a weird, I'm like, bro,
but also understanding that the pain and the hatred within
the other worker.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so that brings us to
our final theme. It's a big one about stories and art.
(28:16):
So obviously, I would say this is an homage to
a bunch of different types of horror genres, to urban legends,
to creepy folk tales, things like that. And a lot
of those classic stories that we've heard do involve women. Like,
(28:40):
you know, either as the ghosts, somebody who's saying something's
wrong here. And just the way she uses those archetypes,
but kind of shifts them. So I do like, here's
a quote, sort of exemplifying part of what I mean.
(29:00):
Brides never fare well in stories. Stories can sense happiness
and snuff it out like a candle. So going back
to what I was saying with the husband's ditch about
how she tried to raise her son to be better,
part of what she does is she tells him these stories,
(29:21):
these urban urban tale urban legends these folk tales through
the woman's perspective which is not usually what we get
uh so here's another quote so then i tell him
stories closer to true children who go missing along a
particular stretch of railroad track, lured by the sound of
(29:42):
a phantom train to parts unknown, a black dog that
appears at a person's doorstep three days before her passing
a trio of frogs that corner you in the marshlands
and tell your fortune for a price. My husband, I
think would forbid these stories, but my son, listens to
them with solemnity and keeps them to himself. So she's
trying to pass on these stories but give them a
(30:08):
more woman's perspective or like a less told specifically from
like the male viewpoint woman victimhood perspective. But then her
husband steps in and ruins it, I'll say. But One
of the things that I immediately picked up on and
(30:31):
that I loved is that there are references to scary
stories to tell in the dark, which is something that
I read as a kid and I loved. I used to, like,
every Halloween, I would light a candle and me and
my friend would read these stories aloud to each other.
Loved them. And I feel like you and I recently
were talking about the specific one she mentioned, which I
(30:53):
have to say, like, she might not specifically be She
might not be referencing Scary Stories to Tell in the
Dark necessarily, but it is in Scary Stories to Tell
in the Dark. I would say probably, but it's not specified.
But there is a story in there where in the
beginning of the book, it tells you that none of
(31:15):
these stories are true except for one. And you're supposed
to kind of guess which one you think it is.
And it is the one where a mother and daughter...
are in Paris, the mother gets really sick, and the
front desk basically sends the daughter on a wild goose
(31:36):
chase to get the medicine that she needs, and it
takes forever. And it just feels like everybody's stalling her
at every point, everything's going wrong. She comes back to
the hotel, and they say they have no record of
her or her mother being there. When the daughter asks
to see the room, They've changed the wallpapers different. There's
(31:57):
no sign that anyone had been in there. It turns
out the mother had contracted something that was really, really
contagious and that they were worried. The hotel staff, I guess,
were worried that if word got out that it would
really impact the people coming to their hotel and tourism dollars.
(32:21):
But she tells this story in The Husband Stitch. which
obviously is gaslighting, huge gaslighting. And I think she tells,
she tells this like hook hand story and she tells
it from the woman's point of view. And that one
was very like, why didn't you believe her gaslighting? She
(32:43):
also tells the story of the woman whose husband really
wanted liver and she didn't have any liver.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
Oh, that's right. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
And he, she like, had to go get it from
the graveyard.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
And, you know. And then, yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
And then the ghost is like, who has my liver?
And it's the husband, the husband who ate it.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
And she's like, oh, it's him, not me. That was
my favorite part of the story.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
She's just like, whoops.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
Wasn't me.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
Oh my goodness. But I love that she included those.
Because they do have, I mean, I read those when
I was a kid and they had such staying power
and you would like, lay awake at night thinking about
these things and they would stick with you and that
brings us to i would say most of these thoughts
(33:34):
are from the resident which as i said is the
one she wrote specifically for this book and it's about
the price of art um a lot of conversations around
arts around ego around tropes uh here's a quote what's
worse writing a trope or being one And so the
(33:55):
trope in question is the madwoman. The madwoman in the attic.
And the simplified plot of this story is that there's
like an artist commune. It's like a place where all
the artists go together and work on their projects. It's
(34:18):
very near a lake. Very hippy-dippy, it sounds like. very
strange um and the person we're following is confronting memories
of her time there as a child when they she
was with the brownies um so this one has a
(34:42):
lot of strange like time changes very unreliable narrator which
brings us to a quote It is my right to
reside in my own mind. It is my right, I said.
It is my right to be unsociable, and it is
my right to be unpleasant to be around. Do you
(35:03):
ever listen to yourself? This is crazy. That is crazy.
Everything is crazy to you. By whose measure? Well, it
is my right to be crazy, as you love to
say so much. I have no shame. I have felt
many things in my life, but shame is not among them.
The volume of my voice caused me to stand on
my tiptoes. I could not remember yelling like this ever.
(35:27):
You may think that I have an obligation to you,
but I assure you that us being thrown together in
this arbitrary arrangement does not cohesion make. I have never
had less of an obligation to anyone in my life,
you aggressively ordinary woman. Yeah, so this was after... Another artist,
(35:49):
whom she did not like, already didn't like her, had
accused her of this trope thing. Like, you're just being
the crazy woman in the attic. You're doing the trope.
But then had flat out called her crazy. And after this,
(36:09):
after this whole thing, she goes into the... Because everybody
gets cabins, sort of. And she goes into the attic
of her cabin and writes mad woman, mad woman in
the attic, which I do love.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
Also, again, the story also, I was like, because I
feel like the endings on all of these stories, she
makes sure to make you think what really happened. You
realize you've only seen one perspective and as bad as
you want to feel for the, uh, what you would
assume is the protagonist could may not be the good
(36:48):
person because you have the wife who's like shocked and
a little worried that she's there.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Yeah. The ending for that one is certainly strange. It's very, uh,
because it also, the whole time she's thinking about her wife,
but she's not getting letters from her wife. Like that
was a big thing. She kept checking for letters from
her wife. So I thought the big twist was going
(37:17):
to be like her wife was dead or she was dead. Honestly,
at one point I was like.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
That was, I was like that. I thought that they
were like, did she die when she first got there?
And she was.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
She was really sick.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
Yeah. Well, no, she was like all over the road.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
So that was my thought.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
I mean, again, I'm not sure. And then this one
does like I had to reread. the part where she's
remembering her trauma as a kid. Uh, cause I was like, wait,
what's going on here? It was just hopping all around. Um,
I did enjoy it. It was a strange one though. Uh,
(38:01):
here's another quote. And this was after her traumatic experience
where the kids pranked her. Um, I understood that knowledge
was a dwarfing, obliterating, all-consuming thing. And to have it
was to both be grateful and suffer greatly. Which I like.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
Yeah. Well, yeah, that one has a lot of conversation
back and forth about art. And I was reading a
review from NPR about it. And they had a good,
(38:46):
I guess, kind of takeaway where they were like, there's
some things we can't fight or control necessarily. But if
you're going to be the mad woman, at least make
it your attic. People are going to label you that way.
It is your attic. So, yeah, I really enjoyed it.
(39:07):
I thought it was fun. It's definitely a strange, surreal experience.
I did want to include this final quote. This is
from the acknowledgement, which I did read after our conversation
with Genevieve. Every woman artist who has come before me,
I am speechless in the face of their courage. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
Well, she has really, she's written so much and has
been so successful and I'm really happy about that. And
I'm like, now I want to read your other books. Right.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
This was definitely one of those that was like, well,
it's going to be stuck in my head for a while.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
Yeah, it's a lot of food for thought, for sure. Yeah,
and the imagery is just so visceral to me. But
I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed the different writing
styles with everyone. I thought that was really cool. And creative.
(40:16):
The stories were creative.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
Very.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
Yes, yes. Well... listeners as always if you have any
suggestions for what our next pick should be or if
you have any thoughts about this one please let us
know you can email us at hello at stuff whenever
told you.com you can find us on blue sky i'm
on stuff podcast or on instagram and tiktok at stuff
whenever told you we're also on youtube we have some
merchandise at cotton bureau and we have a book you
(40:39):
can get wherever you get your books thanks as always
to our super producer rima and our executive person maya
thank you thanks to you for listening Tough One Never
Told You is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, you can check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, this is Annie.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
And Samantha.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
And welcome to Stuff I Never Told You, a production
of iHeartRadio. And today we have a first here on
Book Club. I think, Samantha, correct me if I'm wrong,
but I believe this is the first time we're featuring
a book by an author we've already covered before. Yeah.
(00:33):
I think so.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
You are correct. Because we try to spread it out.
So this is the first time we were like, oh,
we want to come back.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Yes, because we both loved the graphic novel, The Lola Woods.
That's one of my favorite things we've read for this segment.
And we kept coming across the author's other works. And
it was just so tempting and eventually... I said, I
really want to read this. So today we are focusing
(01:02):
on Carmen Maria Machado's debut novel, Her Body and Other Parties,
which is a collection of eight horror short stories that
cover a wide range of fears and anxieties facing women.
So the eight stories are The Husband Stitch, Inventory, Mothers,
Especially Heinous, Real Women Have Bodies, Eight Bites, The Resident,
(01:25):
and Difficult at Parties. After it was published in 2017,
it was nominated for numerous awards and won the Shirley
Jackson Award. It's genre-bending and strange and visceral and haunting
and very queer, I have to say. It captures a
lot of girlhood and young womanhood with threads of urban legends,
(01:48):
ghost stories, Girl Scout camp stories, the type of stories
that stick with you and that are often shared or
passed on. A lot of them are ambiguous or feature
an unreliable narrator. It's a political conversation and at times
condemnation of how we as a society treat women and
(02:10):
women's bodies. I have to say I had the most
embarrassing revelation after I finished it and I was just
thinking about it because it was a book I really
like sat with afterwards. I was like, oh, let me
let me go through my thoughts here. And I was like, wow,
that's a lot of stuff about women's bodies. And I
was like, yeah, the title. Yes. Yes. Yes. So before
(02:35):
we get into this, spoilers and content warning, this book
is pretty graphic when it comes to sex, eroticism, and
body harm. Not necessarily in a bad way. There's like
good and bad of that, but but it exists. Some
of the themes are pretty heavy. We're going to be
(02:55):
touching on these topics that we aren't going to go
to in depth. One of the things I love about
this book is that it has a lot of really
creative styles of writing. And Samantha and I were talking
about this beforehand. Just every story felt very unique and
very different in a way that I very much enjoyed.
(03:17):
So the first one, for instance, has this thing where
it says, if you're reading this story aloud, and then
it will have like instructions. So if you are reading
this story out loud, force a listener to reveal a
devastating secret, then open the nearest window to the street
and scream it as loudly as you are able. And
(03:38):
just to kind of capture those emotions, those really powerful
emotions that she's trying to convey. And interestingly, Samantha was
further ahead in reading the book than I was, or listening,
as the case may be. You were telling me about
(04:00):
this one based on Law & Order SVU.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Right.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
And I was very confused. I was like, wait, so
if I haven't seen Law & Order SVU, what's going
to happen to me? And you're like, no, no, no,
you're going to be fine. And I was. So Especially Heinous,
which is the longest short story in there, is essentially
an even more messed up episode of Law & Order SVU.
(04:29):
So it's like actually Benson and Stabler are the characters,
and it's broken down by short episode descriptions. Machado used
the real episode titles to make this whole thing. There
are also doppelgangers, Henson and Abler, who seem better and happier.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Which, by the way, it took me a minute to
realize Henson and Abler. I was like, oh. Oh, okay. Like,
I literally was like, why are they going back and
forth from these characters? I'm confused. Okay, I get it.
I get it now.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Yes. Yes. And there's a lot going on in this
short story. There's alien objections. There's ghosts. Here's an example. Quote, redemption.
Benson accidentally catches a rapist when she Google stalks her
newest OKCupid date. She can't decide whether or not to
(05:26):
mark this in success, call it rapist, or failure, date
didn't work out column. She marks it in both. So
it's just little entries like that for every episode title. Yeah.
There's another one that stood out to me is inventory.
wherein it's told through somebody's almost journal entries about their
(05:51):
sex partners. And in the background, you realize the apocalypse
is happening and it's getting worse and worse. But it's
not the focus. The sex partners are the focus.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Right, right.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Yeah. So because these are short stories, we're not going
to do our usual plot summary, but we are going
to be discussing plot details and the themes. Okay. I personally,
if this is your thing, if you like short stories,
body horror, I really recommend this book. But yes, let
(06:24):
us get started. One of the first themes I would
say is life and death, which makes sense because it
is a collection of horror short stories. There's just a
lot of, because it's body horror stories, There's a lot
of writing about the ways your body can fail you,
(06:51):
like a lot of illness or injury, a lot of
stuff like that. And then just like imminent death is
in several of them. Or even ghosts outside of the
SVU one. There's another ghost story in there. Here's a
(07:13):
quote I wanted to include. Scoffing is the first mistake
a woman can make. Life is too short to be
afraid of nothing, she said, and I will show you.
Pride is the second mistake. Afterward, everyone believed that she
had wished to die, even though she had died proving
that she wanted to live. As it turns out, being
right was the third and worst mistake. So I really
(07:37):
like that. Because the... I love this idea that she
was trying to prove she didn't want to die and
in doing so died. And there's just so many great
quotes in this book that it was hard to isolate,
but that one stood out to me. Another big theme, obviously,
(08:02):
is bodies. And women's bodies in particular. And sex. There
is a lot of sex and sensuality and desire in
this book. As I said, the joys and horrors of it,
it's not always good, it's not always bad. Another thing
is not respecting women's boundaries. Here's a quote from The
(08:23):
Husband Stitch. A wife, he says, should have no secrets
from her husband. I don't have any secrets, I tell him.
The ribbon. The ribbon is not a secret. It's just mine.
So in this story... It's a take on a popular
urban legend about the woman with the ribbon around her neck.
(08:44):
She takes it off and then her head comes off.
Which I feel like we've read another version of this
story in another series of short stories. Right.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
I know it exists in the stories you tell in
the dark or the stories you tell in the dark.
So this is a legend that she really just put
into it. Because I was like, wait, wait, wait. This
is familiar. Yes. And I did not think this is
where it was going to go. Because I was like,
that is obviously an urban legend story. And she took
(09:16):
it into this realm. But she really opened it up
because I was like, man, there's this level of like
this dude who had everything and happiness and love. And
it was wonderful. But he had to do this thing
because it was one thing he could not have. Which
talks about men in general, about like the challenge and
this conversation in it as well. Willing to change. not
(09:38):
hear her trust her when she says don't do this
this is the only like i've never requested anything from
you but this one thing and he still needed to
own that of her and it was like.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Wow yeah yeah and he passed that on to his
son which we will talk about later, but in her
version of this story, which I'm pretty sure it was
called Revenge. It was a Japanese set of horror stories
we did. I think it had a similar... Oh, that one?
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
It had something similar in this vein. In this Women
are born with a ribbon somewhere around their body. And
it's just part of them. But he didn't view it
as that. He viewed it as something that he should
own or be able to have. And he would like,
even though she had made explicit her boundaries about it,
(10:39):
he would kind of like pull at it and ask
her about it. All of this stuff. So this goes into...
Another thing that I saw throughout this book, men's desire
being prioritized. So after giving birth in the husband's stitch,
the woman in question undergoes a painful procedure to tighten
(11:01):
her vagina so that intercourse with her husband will be
more pleasurable for him. And that's what the title refers to.
The husband's stitch is an actual thing. And she just
went along with it because she thought she had to.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Well, in the story, it seemed interesting because she was like, wait, what?
That was not a thing I'm thinking about. I'm thinking
about everything else. I'm thinking about the fact that it
was so painful that this is going to be a problem,
that knowing that I'm probably not going to be able
to have another child because of all the problems. But
that's what you're worried about. And when she was about
to ask a question that had nothing to do with that,
(11:36):
the doctor's first response was like, oh, no, no, we
took care of it. You're going to be as tight as...
She's like, what the... Okay. And never asked the question
that she really had pertaining to her own body.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Exactly. Exactly. Because they're like viewing it as property of men.
They're not viewing it as her own. Right.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
And he never asked her. He just looked at her
husband and was like, yeah, I got you, man.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
I know what you want to eat.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
So gross. So gross. There are also themes of sexual
assault throughout. So the SVU story, for instance, is a
(12:20):
way to ask, like, why do we watch a show
about women and girls being raped and murdered? And the
answer is the scary truth, and that's because women and
girls are raped and murdered. And then there's another story
at the end, Bad at Parties, that is about a
(12:41):
sexual trauma woman who has experienced sexual trauma and is
trying to get over it and be intimate, sexually intimate
with her partner again. And to do that, she's, she
rents these porn tapes and then she goes online. But
she can hear the voice, the like inner voices of
(13:04):
the porn actors. And it just completely takes her out
of it. Obviously, because they're thinking about things like, I
got to go do X, Y, Z. My husband won't
like that. Like, you know, all these things. And that
one was upsetting because the partner wasn't like necessarily pushing her,
(13:24):
but she was really pushing herself. Right. To get over it.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
It sounded like the worth of their relationship was based
on whether or not she can have sex like they
used to.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
And then her thinking that her being strong is to
get past it, stay in the same apartment. where everything happened.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
But then, like, being obsessed into these videos because she
can see and hear things beyond. And it's interesting in
the way she relays it because she realizes it kind
of takes the way of these sexual things that's supposed
to entertain mostly men, that she sees the humanity behind
it because she's seen, like, how it can be used
(14:10):
against women oftentimes. And so that connection is like, separated
into being an act of like not a submission but
entertainment and that it's not nothing is real like that
sex has become like being an expression not an actual
expression of love it's just not real type of thing.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Yeah well and that's what she was experiencing at a
very awkward dinner party which she was having these interactions
that she just felt were so false and so fake
and nobody was being honest with each other. And, um,
because of what she'd just recently been through, she couldn't,
(14:57):
she couldn't deal with that. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Yeah. Well, I think also it sounded like she didn't
like parties to begin with.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
I think she felt she was awkward to begin with,
but then escalated by all of this. But at the
same time, also being confronted with a video camera.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Like that connection was an interesting moment for her to
be like, no, this is happening to me too. And
then also needing to use that videotape herself to videotape
herself because she was doing so many things during the
night that her boyfriend was like, yeah, you were trying
to kill me a couple of times because you're being restless.
She's not realizing this. So she needed that proof herself.
(15:37):
But also it felt like when she was videotaping them
that she could hear each other's thoughts too.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Yeah. Well, and I thought that was really interesting because
it felt like she was trying to reestablish a connection
to her body after her trauma. And she had this
camera like recording herself and watching it later and trying
to make sense of how she was acting versus how
(16:11):
she was feeling um yeah it was very interesting very
interesting one another theme as we often talk about in
our horror episodes motherhood so we already mentioned in husband
stitch there was um a thread of her she gives
(16:34):
birth to a son And she wants to raise him
to be a better man. And her son, at first,
that looked like that was going to be the case.
And we're going to talk a bit more about why
at the end. But then her husband pointed out, he
(16:58):
othered her for the ribbon, basically. He was like, this
ribbon is strange. Whereas previously their son had accepted, oh,
this is just a part of her. Now he viewed
it as, oh, this is a strange thing. And he
started pulling at it too. But she also has this
(17:18):
thought of like, she'd rather raise a son than a
daughter because she was afraid of raising a daughter in
the society that they were in. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
She said it's a void, so no ribbon.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Indicating that what she was going through, that daughter would
have gone through as well. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
Yes. There's also another story where one of the characters says,
essentially he's like, thank God we can't make a baby
because it's a queer couple. And then they do have
a baby. Yes.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
I was like, what? What's happening? What is happening? Yes.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
As I said, there are a lot of queer themes.
That story in particular has a lot of unreliable narrator
and you're not quite sure what's going on. And then
in the story, The Resident, which I believe is the
(18:24):
only one she wrote specifically for this book. Like every
other one had been written and published in other publications,
but The Resident, was new to this book. There is
a prank with the main character when she was a
kid in the brownies. And I found that whole thing interesting.
I was like, is this true about the brownies? But
(18:47):
where she basically was pranked because of her queerness. She
kissed a girl and she was really excited about it.
But then they kind of took her into the woods
and she had a pretty terrible experience. Um, I got
really sick. So there's things like that. There's other, um,
(19:12):
there's plenty of queer storylines throughout. I would say body image,
big one in this. Um, one of them was weight
and surgery with the story eight bites. It was strange
to read that now. Because we got all the like
GLP-1s and stuff like that. Because it was sort of,
(19:35):
it was framed as a very experimental surgery that everybody
was getting. So you got to hop on board or else.
It reminds me of the short story we did a
long time. ago on this book i read this like
short story i read in high school called like what
(19:57):
you lose but it was in the smoothies they were
these like smoothies that were the best thing you ever
had and then people would gain weight because they loved
the smoothies but all these like weight loss machines popped
up next to them And then guess what happens when
you use them 10 times? Aliens come for you. But
(20:20):
this was interesting in terms of there was sort of
a element of being haunted by the pieces of you,
the parts of you that you got rid of. And
then there was a lot of pressure and judgment about
weight loss procedures, whether it was to get one or
to not get one. So the mother and daughter in
(20:42):
this story, the mother gets it. The daughter is very
unhappy with this decision and asks her mom if her
mom thinks something is wrong with her body based on
the way she speaks about her own because they kind
of looked alike. And so I think that that touches
(21:03):
on a tension that a lot of us have had
where maybe you know you have these unhealthy thoughts body
image or body ideals, but you still want them, but
you don't want, like, other people to feel the same way,
but the other people are seeing what you're doing. Right, right.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
It was also interesting because, A, it sounded like she
had to trade her life. Essentially, there was a marker. Like,
if you do this, you're going to die at this point.
And it was, it shortened their lifespan. And she was
willing to sacrifice that to be skinny once again. Also
interesting because, When she's having a conversation with her daughter,
(21:43):
I can't tell if she's actually having a conversation with
her daughter or if it's in her mind. Yeah. Like,
that is one of the ghosts. Because when she talks
to her sisters who had all gone through it, it
sounded like a rite of passage for the entire family.
And it sounded like each one of them had been
confronted by happy ghosts.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
They're like, this is my future self. Thank you for
doing this or whatever, whatnot. She was the only one
amongst them. that had the haunting ghost, which she tried
to kill. I think she does kill. She doesn't know
what it is, but she killed it. But something else
comes back instead, or a different part comes back instead.
So it's interesting. I was like, I don't know if
this is real.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Yeah. No.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Or she's fighting the demons here.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
No, I think you're absolutely right. And that goes back
to the whole unreliable narrator, ambiguous ending. Is this real?
A lot of the stories make you at the end
be like, how did that really happen?
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Well, especially with the one with the queer couple having
the baby and the baby just dropped off. Because then
she sees the families with her child and it turns
out to be like, maybe she just dreamed up this
by seeing a picture of this child and broke into
someone's home.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Yes, that one is definitely... I think maybe number one.
It's in the top three of the most unreliable narrators.
I don't really know what....
Speaker 2 (23:12):
I will say, in the caveat of all this, the
entirety of the book, I was like, Annie, I think
you're going to have to translate some of these for
me because it may have went over my head. I'm
not sure exactly what was happening on this level. So
you might have to tell me what is going down
at this point. Because also in the SVU.
(23:34):
They had interns that were demons. And I was like,
I don't know why the disappearing interns is a part
of this story.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
I have to say, when I think of her writing
that one, I bet she was just having a delightful time.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Yes. I absolutely was like, I believe this may be
a fanfic of SVU in such a way that is
one of the most creative fanfics I've ever heard in
my life.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
It's so creative.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
It's so unique.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
It's so unique. And she originally was going to... I
think she was going to incorporate the original descriptions of
the episodes. But it was too long. So that's why
she went with the titles. And she said, basically, she
just looked at the title and tried to make a surreal...
version of what that title made her think of accomplished
(24:35):
accomplished and it does build and it's it's so strange
oh also it has a like really fun detail where
uh stadler can hear the like yes he thinks it's
like a like headache thing or he's hallucinating.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
The dun dun that comes in my like and it's
definitely the things that you've taught me about fanfic that
moment of like shipping And I know exactly what DA
she's talking about. I know exactly what, you know, like,
I'm like, oh, she wanted them to get, she needed
them to kiss. I get it. I get it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
It's a grand old time.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
It was. But back to, sorry, I will say about
the fading story. One of the, like, one of the
parts of all the things, like, why would you think this?
I'm like, now I need to go get oysters. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Because that's one of the things that she kind of
enjoys before she goes into that. And I'm like, yeah,
I need that.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Yes. So I think the fading story is really interesting.
So in this story, women are essentially fading away. Not
all women.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Oh, that was, that was a unique, that was horrifying.
That was, if that, I think there's so many that's like,
oh no, like, oh no, impending doom. But this was like,
Legitimately like, oh.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
This is a horror, this is ghost or horror story. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
And there's nothing you can do once you start fading
that they know of. And it was really sad, honestly.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
No, it was super sad.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
Yeah. Yeah. And it made me think of just so
many stories, but also just kind of the reality a
lot of times, unfortunately, is, you know, women having to
make themselves small or disappear or whatever it is to
(26:42):
make other people comfortable. Because, yeah, once you start fading,
you're just going to disappear. And that's the end of you.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
And the sadness is that no one is talking about it?
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
And then also the dialogue between the two dudes just still,
still seeing them as only sexual beings and whether or
not they can have sex with them.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Yep. That was pretty disgusting. Yeah. That was pretty gross.
And meanwhile, we have this portrait of a queer couple
and one of them is disappearing and just.
Kind of the heartbreak of that and not being able
to stop it. While these dudes are talking about, I
(27:38):
wonder if I can still have sex with these fading ladies.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
I don't know. Being picky about it.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
That was like, I know that's such a weird, I'm like, bro,
but also understanding that the pain and the hatred within
the other worker.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so that brings us to
our final theme. It's a big one about stories and art.
(28:16):
So obviously, I would say this is an homage to
a bunch of different types of horror genres, to urban legends,
to creepy folk tales, things like that. And a lot
of those classic stories that we've heard do involve women. Like,
(28:40):
you know, either as the ghosts, somebody who's saying something's
wrong here. And just the way she uses those archetypes,
but kind of shifts them. So I do like, here's
a quote, sort of exemplifying part of what I mean.
(29:00):
Brides never fare well in stories. Stories can sense happiness
and snuff it out like a candle. So going back
to what I was saying with the husband's ditch about
how she tried to raise her son to be better,
part of what she does is she tells him these stories,
(29:21):
these urban urban tale urban legends these folk tales through
the woman's perspective which is not usually what we get
uh so here's another quote so then i tell him
stories closer to true children who go missing along a
particular stretch of railroad track, lured by the sound of
(29:42):
a phantom train to parts unknown, a black dog that
appears at a person's doorstep three days before her passing
a trio of frogs that corner you in the marshlands
and tell your fortune for a price. My husband, I
think would forbid these stories, but my son, listens to
them with solemnity and keeps them to himself. So she's
trying to pass on these stories but give them a
(30:08):
more woman's perspective or like a less told specifically from
like the male viewpoint woman victimhood perspective. But then her
husband steps in and ruins it, I'll say. But One
of the things that I immediately picked up on and
(30:31):
that I loved is that there are references to scary
stories to tell in the dark, which is something that
I read as a kid and I loved. I used to, like,
every Halloween, I would light a candle and me and
my friend would read these stories aloud to each other.
Loved them. And I feel like you and I recently
were talking about the specific one she mentioned, which I
(30:53):
have to say, like, she might not specifically be She
might not be referencing Scary Stories to Tell in the
Dark necessarily, but it is in Scary Stories to Tell
in the Dark. I would say probably, but it's not specified.
But there is a story in there where in the
beginning of the book, it tells you that none of
(31:15):
these stories are true except for one. And you're supposed
to kind of guess which one you think it is.
And it is the one where a mother and daughter...
are in Paris, the mother gets really sick, and the
front desk basically sends the daughter on a wild goose
(31:36):
chase to get the medicine that she needs, and it
takes forever. And it just feels like everybody's stalling her
at every point, everything's going wrong. She comes back to
the hotel, and they say they have no record of
her or her mother being there. When the daughter asks
to see the room, They've changed the wallpapers different. There's
(31:57):
no sign that anyone had been in there. It turns
out the mother had contracted something that was really, really
contagious and that they were worried. The hotel staff, I guess,
were worried that if word got out that it would
really impact the people coming to their hotel and tourism dollars.
(32:21):
But she tells this story in The Husband Stitch. which
obviously is gaslighting, huge gaslighting. And I think she tells,
she tells this like hook hand story and she tells
it from the woman's point of view. And that one
was very like, why didn't you believe her gaslighting? She
(32:43):
also tells the story of the woman whose husband really
wanted liver and she didn't have any liver.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
Oh, that's right. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
And he, she like, had to go get it from
the graveyard.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
And, you know. And then, yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
And then the ghost is like, who has my liver?
And it's the husband, the husband who ate it.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
And she's like, oh, it's him, not me. That was
my favorite part of the story.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
She's just like, whoops.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
Wasn't me.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
Oh my goodness. But I love that she included those.
Because they do have, I mean, I read those when
I was a kid and they had such staying power
and you would like, lay awake at night thinking about
these things and they would stick with you and that
brings us to i would say most of these thoughts
(33:34):
are from the resident which as i said is the
one she wrote specifically for this book and it's about
the price of art um a lot of conversations around
arts around ego around tropes uh here's a quote what's
worse writing a trope or being one And so the
(33:55):
trope in question is the madwoman. The madwoman in the attic.
And the simplified plot of this story is that there's
like an artist commune. It's like a place where all
the artists go together and work on their projects. It's
(34:18):
very near a lake. Very hippy-dippy, it sounds like. very
strange um and the person we're following is confronting memories
of her time there as a child when they she
was with the brownies um so this one has a
(34:42):
lot of strange like time changes very unreliable narrator which
brings us to a quote It is my right to
reside in my own mind. It is my right, I said.
It is my right to be unsociable, and it is
my right to be unpleasant to be around. Do you
(35:03):
ever listen to yourself? This is crazy. That is crazy.
Everything is crazy to you. By whose measure? Well, it
is my right to be crazy, as you love to
say so much. I have no shame. I have felt
many things in my life, but shame is not among them.
The volume of my voice caused me to stand on
my tiptoes. I could not remember yelling like this ever.
(35:27):
You may think that I have an obligation to you,
but I assure you that us being thrown together in
this arbitrary arrangement does not cohesion make. I have never
had less of an obligation to anyone in my life,
you aggressively ordinary woman. Yeah, so this was after... Another artist,
(35:49):
whom she did not like, already didn't like her, had
accused her of this trope thing. Like, you're just being
the crazy woman in the attic. You're doing the trope.
But then had flat out called her crazy. And after this,
(36:09):
after this whole thing, she goes into the... Because everybody
gets cabins, sort of. And she goes into the attic
of her cabin and writes mad woman, mad woman in
the attic, which I do love.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
Also, again, the story also, I was like, because I
feel like the endings on all of these stories, she
makes sure to make you think what really happened. You
realize you've only seen one perspective and as bad as
you want to feel for the, uh, what you would
assume is the protagonist could may not be the good
(36:48):
person because you have the wife who's like shocked and
a little worried that she's there.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Yeah. The ending for that one is certainly strange. It's very, uh,
because it also, the whole time she's thinking about her wife,
but she's not getting letters from her wife. Like that
was a big thing. She kept checking for letters from
her wife. So I thought the big twist was going
(37:17):
to be like her wife was dead or she was dead. Honestly,
at one point I was like.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
That was, I was like that. I thought that they
were like, did she die when she first got there?
And she was.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
She was really sick.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
Yeah. Well, no, she was like all over the road.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
So that was my thought.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
I mean, again, I'm not sure. And then this one
does like I had to reread. the part where she's
remembering her trauma as a kid. Uh, cause I was like, wait,
what's going on here? It was just hopping all around. Um,
I did enjoy it. It was a strange one though. Uh,
(38:01):
here's another quote. And this was after her traumatic experience
where the kids pranked her. Um, I understood that knowledge
was a dwarfing, obliterating, all-consuming thing. And to have it
was to both be grateful and suffer greatly. Which I like.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
Yeah. Well, yeah, that one has a lot of conversation
back and forth about art. And I was reading a
review from NPR about it. And they had a good,
(38:46):
I guess, kind of takeaway where they were like, there's
some things we can't fight or control necessarily. But if
you're going to be the mad woman, at least make
it your attic. People are going to label you that way.
It is your attic. So, yeah, I really enjoyed it.
(39:07):
I thought it was fun. It's definitely a strange, surreal experience.
I did want to include this final quote. This is
from the acknowledgement, which I did read after our conversation
with Genevieve. Every woman artist who has come before me,
I am speechless in the face of their courage. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
Well, she has really, she's written so much and has
been so successful and I'm really happy about that. And
I'm like, now I want to read your other books. Right.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
This was definitely one of those that was like, well,
it's going to be stuck in my head for a while.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
Yeah, it's a lot of food for thought, for sure. Yeah,
and the imagery is just so visceral to me. But
I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed the different writing
styles with everyone. I thought that was really cool. And creative.
(40:16):
The stories were creative.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
Very.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
Yes, yes. Well... listeners as always if you have any
suggestions for what our next pick should be or if
you have any thoughts about this one please let us
know you can email us at hello at stuff whenever
told you.com you can find us on blue sky i'm
on stuff podcast or on instagram and tiktok at stuff
whenever told you we're also on youtube we have some
merchandise at cotton bureau and we have a book you
(40:39):
can get wherever you get your books thanks as always
to our super producer rima and our executive person maya
thank you thanks to you for listening Tough One Never
Told You is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, you can check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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